To Live
by Miranda River
Summary: After Canary Wharf, the Doctor questions the point of existence. Death gives him an answer. Rated K  for curse words.


**Right. So this is my foray into two fandoms—The Sandman series written by the fantastic Neil Gaiman, and Doctor Who. I was writing another story when I suddenly wondered what it would be like if the Doctor met one of the Endless and since I've been in such a Thomas Hardy mood lately, I decided to make the Doctor super-emo to the point of being like Hamlet and thought he could use a conversation with Death. It was fun and hopefully fun for people to read.**

He wants to die.

He wants the pain to go away. He wants to forget. He wishes to feel nothing, be nothing because he cannot experience it any longer.

There was so much to see, so much to do and show Rose-

It hurts. It hurts so much and that's why he wants to end this. He has so much pain and yet the universe gives him even more, ripping away the one person he loved and what was the point anymore?

He wants to forget.

"You're not supposed to."

He head whips up. In his TARDIS there is a girl with a head of hair that gives his a run for its money. She's pale to the point of being white, quite literally white, bringing it into stark contrast to her black hair, clothing and make-up.

She smiles at him, a sunny smile that he finds out of place on someone who looks so very solemn, yet so very much in place.

"Isn't it fantastic?" she asks him, "all that pain and happiness, defining each other by their very existence. You need one in order to know the other, but you already knew that, didn't you Doctor?"

This small little thing plops herself down in the navigator's chair and proceeds to chatter like he's never heard before, talking about seemingly everything that comes into her mind and even he—and he is _clever—_has trouble keeping up.

Finally she pauses and the silence in the TARDIS engulfs him. Rose won't sing anymore, she won't be here to fill the void.

"Hey," the girl says gently. "It's going to be okay."

"Who are you?" he asks. He should have from the very beginning, yet she had chattered so much he couldn't get a word in.

"I think you know, Doctor," she says quietly.

A moment passes and she speaks again. "It's unusual. I don't normally do this sort of thing. Your people weren't really my thing, no offense. You regenerate. It goes against my rules, by hey, all the rules get broken," she says flippantly.

"The Endless," he breathes. They were the stuff of legend, a family since the beginning of time and until this moment he thought they existed only in legends, bits of fiction. They were the embodiments of ideas, according to the story, only ending when the idea itself ceased to exist.

"Well, one of them, at least," she says. "You know, in your brooding, you remind me of my brother.

"But! To business. A Time Lord who wises to die. Or thinks he wants to. But do you, Doctor? Really?"

"She's gone." With that sentence he conveys his grief, his rage, his sadness, his despair.

"She still lives," the girl argues. "She's in the world, just like you."

"No! That's not how that works! I can't see her, ever again. She's gone and there's not a bloody thing I can do to stop it!" He sounds like the god other worlds claim him to be, demonstrating his power to destroy through his voice alone.

She gets up suddenly, striding over to him in order to poke him in the chest. "Ugh! Men! Someone's taken away your toy and you'll bitch until the universe hands it back. Typical," she spits.

"Rose was more than that," he growls, commanding her to back off.

"Is," she corrects gently. "She is more than that."

"Don't you get it?" she continues. "You're all so very alive. You love and lose and everything in between. And you! You of all the people in all the worlds should understand the infinity of it all. Everything can happen, all in an instant."

"Then what is the bloody point? What is the point if the tragedy remains?" he yells.

If she's intimidated by him, she doesn't show it. She's of the Endless. His playacting of being a god isn't a match for the anthropomorphic personification of an idea, and a powerful idea at that. She smiles at him and shakes her head.

"Yup. Just like Dream."

He starts to laugh. He doesn't understand why, when his world has fallen apart, but it has to do with the sister of the Endless. He laughs because she's had the kindness to put things into perspective.

He understands now.

Rose is alive.

So is he.

He must, for the sake of her, keep going.

"Thank you," he tells her.

She gives him another one of her sunny grins, walking towards the door of the TARDIS. "You're a good guy, I can tell. I wasn't sent for you, not now. You just needed a reminder of **why **and well, I was curious. I've never met a Time Lord before."

He smiles, the first genuine smile in a while. "I've never met Death of the Endless."

She winks at him. "Be seeing you."

"Yeah, not for a very, very lime time," he says under his breath.

She leaves with a whisper of the flapping of wings and he turns back to the console.

Right. It's time to live.


End file.
